【Sydney Morning Herald】A sight for poor spies

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A sight for poor spies
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/a-sight-for-poor-spies-20090312-8w3e.html?page=-1

March 15, 2009

Sally Hammond visits the Fujian houses that baffled the US in the Cold War.

Ourguide points to the crone seated just inside the doorway, grinningtoothlessly at us. "See that old lady? She's 90." Ancient as she is,the amazing "house that is a village" we have just entered is farolder. In fact, some of its doughnut-shaped earthen buildings werebuilt as long as 700 years ago, by Mongolian refugees who, after manyyears of searching, chose to settle in the fertile valleys of China'sFujian Province.

Here, in these impregnablerammed-earth houses topped with black terracotta tiles, life beganagain. At an altitude of 800 metres, the cool climate was perfect togrow cabbages and persimmons, tea and turnips. Little did they realisethat, centuries later, their unique architecture would almost spark aninternational incident.

In 1985, with the ColdWar still front and centre, these strange square and ring-shapedstructures looked sinister enough on the US surveillance satellite torattle the White House. After all, they were hidden in valleys directlyinland from Taiwan. The US government sent in spies to check out the"group nuclear base".

Today, there is a smooth newhighway to Yongding from Xiamen, a tourist island and bustling city onthe coast south of Shanghai. Delightfully relaxed and dotted with lakesand waterways, Yongding is one of China's smaller cities, with apopulation of just 5million. It is almost within sight of Taiwan. Infact, you can just see one of the archipelago's outlying islands a fewkilometres offshore.

By coach, it is a comfortablefour-hour trip. But the US investigators had to trek in over mountainsto see and photograph the evidence - only to leave swiftly,embarrassed.

If our welcome was anything to goby, on entering each "reactor" they would have been offered a cup ofgreen tea, while the only weapons they would have found were knives andcleavers used to dispatch chickens and pigs for the cooking pot. Theclay courtyard of the four-storey earthen fortresses would have beenfilled with fluffy yellow ducklings, toddlers and people going abouttheir daily business.

Warfare was the furthest thing from the minds of these peaceful inhabitants.

Tovisit a "tulou", 46 of which were added to the UNESCO World Heritagelist last year, is to step through a portal into another culture,another time. Big enough for up to a thousand people, each "house" is acomplete village, usually accommodating an entire clan .

Outside,on concrete slabs, chillies, corn, mushrooms, persimmons and rosellasare drying in the sunshine, while slender heads of cabbage hang on afence.

As we clamber up the shaky stairs from theground floor, which is reserved for communal activities, past thesecond floor used for storage to the accommodation level, I feel forthe elderly who have yet another staircase to manage - inexplicably,the fourth (and top) floor is reserved for them.

Downstairs,we sample some of the locally grown tea and marvel over a bottle ofstrong spirit filled with enormous bumblebees. "Drink it. Good for theknees!" we are exhorted. Maybe we'd need to if we had to manage thosestairs every day.

Then came an offer too good to refuse.

Hokkien(Hakka) is the cuisine of Taiwan, though it is perhaps better known asa staple in the hawker food of Singapore and Malaysia. Many Chineseemigrated en masse from Fujian Province in the 19th century -ironically because of famine - and their simple peasant dishes, rich insoy sauce and duck, became the foundation of the popular "nonya" food,which grew out of the intermarriages with Malays.

Welunch in a small room outside the tulou. The plates come constantly:eggplant and red hot chillies, pork belly bathed in oily turnip broth,sweet potato chips dusted with sugar, fried whitebait, cold poachedduck - all fried, all delicious and, finally, all too much.

Youcould be forgiven for thinking the original builders of the tulou werethemselves frustrated chefs. To form the metre-thick walls, local redsoil was first mixed with sand and stone and then glutinous rice, brownsugar and egg whites, making a mix stronger than concrete, even beforeit was reinforced with bamboo.

The balconies thatrun along each floor create an atrium overlooking the central area.Most tulous were built with a single gate, for security, and had asource of water inside, as well as waste disposal. Often a templestands in the centre, for these people brought their Confucian andDaoist beliefs with them.

There are so manytulous in the area - the more elaborate ones date from the 17th and18th centuries - that you could spend days exploring them. We visitanother one in a delightful village called Taxii. Here, while there aresome tulous, most people live in almost European-style housesoverlooking the water.

In the late afternoon as westroll along the path beside the river, we nod and smile at the localsseated outside their homes, smoking and relaxing with their families.Occasionally, we step aside for a cyclist, or a farm truck returninghome, and once a shiny black sedan pushes importantly through.

Inthis remote part of China, it seems ludicrous to imagine satellites andnuclear reactors. But then to people who build with brown sugar and eggwhite, maybe not.

The writer travelled as a guest of Helen Wong's Tours.

TRIP NOTES
Getting there

SingaporeAirlines flies from Sydney to Shanghai 24 times a week. Fares startfrom $811 plus taxes. Yongding is a four-hour coach ride from Xiamen.Helen Wong's Tours (02 9267 7833, see helenwongstours.com) has asix-day Fujian Province tour from April, for groups of two or more, for$1650 a person, twin share, land only.

Staying there

Overnight,before the tour starts, Central Hotel Shanghai. It's adjacent to theNanjing Road Pedestrian Mall. See centralhotelshanghai.com.

Further information

See travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/fujian.

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